Curated Commons // Edition 16
Thank you for subscribing and welcome to the Sixteenth edition of Curated Commons. Let’s dive right in.
When you say you prefer older content, it means money
Very good read in the FT from the former economist of Spotify on our love for music from the past, and what it means for streaming music in the future.
https://www.ft.com/content/deaf2fbf-ab2f-4d1a-b870-7fab104c122f
Music released in the UK in 2019 made up just over 20 per cent of all streams last year, with 2018 taking another fifth or so. Songs released in 2017 and earlier comprised the majority.
Pirate treasure chests are real!
In a remote peninsula where Christopher Columbus originally landed, in Venezuela, where people are reeling from an economic crisis, gold is washing up on the shores. Literally. A story of hope!
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/12/world/venezuela-gold-rush-fishing-village.html
Solving the what-to-buy decision paralysis of consumers
The idea of an endless aisle has encouraged retailers of all shapes to have a vast assortment of products in the hope that something will appeal to consumers (cue long tail). This is resulting in consumers getting into a decision paralysis of sorts unable to figure out what to buy. Some companies are fighting back - by limiting consumer choice. Important to remember here - not every product owner is a Steve Jobs!
The business of ice
Did you know - Some companies in the US make as many as a billion ice cubes a day. Fascinating deep-dive into the business of packaged ice cubes.
Airlines, air, and risk
This is a scary read on how ‘fume events’, where air inside an aircraft accidentally mixes with engine oil releasing toxic fumes, are far more common than we realize, and how Boeing has for years pushed back against installing air quality sensors inside aircraft! Excellent, albeit very worrying, read!
https://www.latimes.com/projects/toxic-chemicals-planes-covid-19-travel-woes/
Magnetic tape has a future. And a strong one at that
The storage density of magnetic tape has been increasing steadily, by 34% a year for nearly three decades. That makes it a good candidate for a long-term inexpensive storage in comparison to flash memory.
Lab-grown organs are coming
This is a fascinating area of science that is making rapid progress. Scientists can already grow skin in a lab to replace that which has been destroyed by burns. Now they're working on other organs.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/growing-organs
Companies love themselves first. Then their shareholders.
A Washington Post analysis found 45 of the 50 biggest U.S. companies turned a profit since March. The majority of firms cut staff and gave the bulk of profits to shareholders.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/50-biggest-companies-coronavirus-layoffs/
Large companies are beginning to realize they can save more in costs by pegging salaries to locations where employees now work from remotely. Ergo, you work from beach-side plans might need to be reworked.
Your privacy & the island of Guernsey
An Israeli corporate intelligence firm got (SS7) access to a mobile network in Channel Islands. This potentially enabled clients of the firm to track the locations of phones across the world. (For the technically inclined, this is one of the infamous SS7 issues)
Gamifying the art of losing a lot of money very quickly
The pandemic has thrust into focus low-cost brokerages such as Robinhood and the ease with which consumers new to the market can quickly build up positions. Gamification is one big reason, says the Massachusetts securities regulators.
One Robinhood customer with no investment experience made more than 12,700 trades in just over six months, according to the complaint.
Hard to drive home the message when you live in such times
Satellites are getting smarter
A satellite startup, Capella Space, now offers the ability to take spot pictures at a resolution of 50cmx50cm. The company uses satellite radar enabling it to ‘see’ through clouds or night-time!
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55326441
Influence & live-stream your way to selling mutual funds
In China, there’s a livestreaming influencer for everything. Including mutual funds.
Art Vs Artist in an age of the algorithm
Do try Google’s latest experiment to sing Opera voices through a machine learning model trained on voices of four Opera singers. When the artist is an algorithm, is that already art? What of the human artists that trained the model? If the algorithmic artist becomes a hit, who lays claim to its success?
https://experiments.withgoogle.com/blob-opera
And then there were more:
A WHO team is set to visit Wuhan in January to probe Covid origins. January 2021. No rush. Not like we are in a global pandemic or anything - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55333200
The FDA has approved genetically engineered pigs for use in food and medical products - https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/14/22175060/fda-approval-genetically-engineered-pigs
Celebrity gossip, but about banal things? A closed Instagram account is trying that and is gaining popularity - https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22164190/deuxmoi-instagram-celebrity-gossip
Cash is very popular in Japan. To drive people away to mobile payment systems, many companies are coming up with lucrative reward point/loyalty schemes. Giving rise to reward point influencers/aficionados - https://restofworld.org/2020/the-point-hackers/
How TikTok changed the world in 2020. Good read - https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20201216-how-tiktok-changed-the-world-in-2020
The highest-paid YouTube stars of 2020 include a nine-year-old at the top. For the third year in a row - https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2020/12/18/the-highest-paid-youtube-stars-of-2020/
Algorithms reflect the biases of their creators, bad algorithms all the more so - neat summary in The Markup - https://themarkup.org/2020-in-review/2020/12/15/algorithms-bias-racism-surveillance
COVID-19 hijacked science. Science is beating it, but has science also lost something in the process? Good long read - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/science-covid-19-manhattan-project/617262/
Fascinating chart on the new-found fascination for SPACs. Incentives always work!
A Parisian thing? “City Of Paris Is Fined 90,000 Euros For Naming Too Many Women To Senior Positions” - https://www.npr.org/2020/12/15/946905346/city-of-paris-is-fined-90-000-euros-for-naming-too-many-women-to-senior-position
I leave you with this prescient video of David Bowie predicting the transformative power of the Internet from a couple decades ago!
Stay safe, and happy reading! And if you liked the newsletter, please do share on your social networks. My DMs on Twitter are always open for any feedback.